"Are Boeing's problems beyond fixable?

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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Are Boeing’s problems beyond fixable?

Boeing reports massive quarterly losses

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As Boeing’s latest chief executive, Kelly Ortberg’s job was never going to be easy. On Wednesday, it got harder still. That morning, Ortberg had faced investors for the first time, telling them that ending a debilitating strike by Boeing’s largest union was the first step to stabilizing the plane maker’s business. But as the day wore on, it became clear that nearly two-thirds of the union members

A how-to for ethical geoengineering research

Ars Technica - All content / 4h

Over the Northern Hemisphere's summer, the world's temperatures hovered near 1.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures, and the catastrophic weather events that ensued provided a preview of what might be expected to be the new normal before mid-century. And the warming won't stop there; currently, our current emissions trajectory is such that we will double that temperature increase by the time th

40 years later, The Terminator still shapes our view of AI

The Terminator influences AI fears

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Ars Technica - All content / 4h

October 26, 2024, marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator —a film that popularized society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop… until you are dead,” as one character memorably puts it. The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet that has taken over the world by initiating nuclea

Yesterday

Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission

Crew-8 astronauts return to Earth

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NASA said Friday one its astronauts is in a hospital in Florida for medical observation after a "normal" predawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX capsule. The mission's other three crew members were cleared to return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston after their own medical evaluations, NASA said. The hospitalized astronaut "is in stable condition and under obs

Ars Live: What else can GLP-1 drugs do? Join us Tuesday for a discussion.

Ars Technica - All content / 18h

News and talk of GLP-1 drugs are everywhere these days—from their smash success in treating Type 2 diabetes and obesity to their astronomical pricing, drug shortages, compounding disputes, and what sometimes seems like an ever-growing list of other conditions the drugs could potentially treat. There are new headlines every day. However, while the drugs have abruptly stolen the spotlight in recent

For the first time, beloved IDE JetBrains Rider will be available for free

WebStorm and Rider free for non-commercial use

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Ars Technica - All content / 19h

The integrated development environment (IDE) Rider by JetBrains is now available for free for the first time ever. After trialing non-commercial free licenses with other products like RustRover and Aqua, JetBrains has introduced a similar option for Rider. It also says this is a permanent situation, not a limited-time initiative. In a blog post announcing the change, JetBrains' Ekaterina Ryabukha

Why is Elon Musk talking to Vladimir Putin, and what does it mean for SpaceX?

Musk and Putin maintain secret talks

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In a blockbuster story published Friday morning , The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two years, with the discussions covering a range of issues from geopolitics to business to personal matters. There are no on-the-record sources confirming the regular conversations between Musk and Putin, and Musk did not comm

US Copyright Office “frees the McFlurry,” allowing repair of ice cream machines

McFlurry machines can now be repaired

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Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge today hailed a decision by the US Copyright Office to "grant an exemption specifically allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment—including soft serve ice cream machines similar to those available at McDonald's." The group, which teamed with iFixit to request the exemption last year, said the government ruling will "free the McFlurry."

Video game libraries lose legal appeal to emulate physical game collections online

Copyright Office denies game preservation

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Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they'r

Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers

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A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search’s reliance on Reddit and Google's AI Overview. In May, Google launched AI Overviews in the US, an experimental feature that populates the top of Google Search results with a summarized answer ba

McDonald’s E. coli outbreak grows by 50% in 3 days as lawsuits mount

Illegal Pete's removes onions amid recall

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Twenty-six more cases have been identified in a multistate E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. The 26 new cases represent a 50 percent increase in the case count from October 22, bringing the total to 75 cases. With the new cases, health officials also reported 12 more hospitalizations, including

X Payments delayed after Musk’s X weirdly withdrew application for NY license

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This October, many Elon Musk believers are wondering, where is X Payments? Last year, Musk claimed in a Spaces conversation that he "would be surprised" if it took longer than mid-2024 to roll out the payments feature that he believes is crucial to transforming the social media app formerly known as Twitter into an everything app . “It would blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the en

Missouri AG claims Google censors Trump, demands info on search algorithm

Missouri investigates Google for censorship

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he is investigating Google, claiming that the tech giant censors conservative speech and manipulated search results about Donald Trump. "BREAKING: I am launching an investigation into Google—the biggest search engine in America—for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation's history. Google is waging war on the

If you thought Astra was going to go away quietly, you were wrong

Astra awarded 44M$ military contract

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Ars Technica - All content / 1d

On Wednesday morning, a surprising email popped into my inbox with the following subject line: "Astra announces Department of Defense contract valued up to $44 Million." I had to read it a second time to make sure I got it right. Astra, the launch company? Astra, whose valuation went from $2.6 billion to $25 million after a series of launch failures? Astra, the company that was taken private in J

Study: DNA corroborates “Well-man” tale from Norse saga

Medieval saga man found in well

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A 12th-century Norse saga tells of an invading army from the south razing a castle stronghold and throwing a dead body into the well to render the water undrinkable. Human remains believed to be those of this so-called "Well-man" were discovered in the 1930s, providing valuable potential outside confirmation of the tale. Scientists have now sequenced the DNA of those remains, and while they could

Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity promote scientific racism in AI search results

Tech giants promote debunked race science

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AI-infused search engines from Google , Microsoft , and Perplexity have been surfacing deeply racist and widely debunked research promoting race science and the idea that white people are genetically superior to nonwhite people. Patrik Hermansson, a researcher with UK-based anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, was in the middle of a monthslong investigation into the resurgent race science movement wh

Fallout: London is a huge Fallout 4 mod that is now playable—and worth playing

Fallout London update nears 1 million downloads

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It took a crew of more than 100 talented modders and another hundred voice actors nearly five years to make Fallout: London . Just as they planned to release it, Bethesda came out with a "next-gen upgrade" of the mod's base game , Fallout 4 , forcing the team to scramble and ultimately find a way to downgrade the game. When they finally released London , they then dealt with game-stopping bugs an

Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG

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Welcome to Edition 7.17 of the Rocket Report! Next week marks 10 years since one of the more spectacular launch failures of this century. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket, then operated by Orbital Sciences, suffered an engine failure six seconds after liftoff from Virginia and crashed back onto the pad in a fiery twilight explosion. I was there and won't forget seeing the rocket falter just

What I learned from 3 years of running Windows 11 on “unsupported” PCs

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The Windows 10 update cliff is coming in October 2025. We've explained why that's a big deal, and we have a comprehensive guide to updating to Windows 11 (recently updated to account for changes in Windows 11 24H2) so you can keep getting security updates, whether you're on an officially supported PC or not. But this is more than just a theoretical exercise; I've been using Windows 11 on some kin

Oct 24, 2024

Google’s DeepMind is building an AI to keep us from hating each other

AI aids consensus in culture wars

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An unprecedented 80 percent of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, think the country is deeply divided over its most important values ahead of the November elections. The general public’s polarization now encompasses issues like immigration, health care, identity politics, transgender rights, or whether we should support Ukraine. Fly across the Atlantic and you’ll see the same thing hap

Scout Motors’ new pickup and SUV EVs will start at “under $60,000”

Scout Motors unveils electric SUV truck

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Scout provided flights from Washington to Nashville and accommodation so Ars could attend the reveal. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Today, the reborn Scout Motors showed off a pair of new electric vehicles that revives the long-dormant maker of trucks and SUVs. Originally owned by International Harvester, Scout now belongs to Volkswagen Group, which decided to use i

Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program

Boeing reports massive quarterly losses

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Sometimes, it's worth noting when something goes unsaid. On Wednesday, Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, participated in his first quarterly conference call with investment analysts. Under fire from labor groups and regulators, Boeing logged a nearly $6.2 billion loss for the last three months, while the new boss pledged a turnaround for the troubled aerospace company. What Ortberg didn't mention

Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King pull onions amid McDonald’s outbreak

Illegal Pete's removes onions amid recall

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Big-name fast food chains, including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Burger King, are reportedly pulling onions off their menus in certain locations amid a deadly, multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders . Though the source of the outbreak bacteria has not been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading suspects are the beef pattie

Good Omens will wrap with a single 90-minute episode

Good Omens final season one episode

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The third and final season of Good Omens , Prime Video's fantasy series adapted from the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, will not be a full season after all, Deadline Hollywood reports . In the wake of allegations of sexual assault against Gaiman this summer, the streaming platform has decided that rather than a full slate of episodes, the series finale will be a single 90-

With four more years like 2023, carbon emissions will blow past 1.5° limit

UN warns of urgent climate action

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On Thursday, the United Nations' Environmental Programme (UNEP) released a report on what it terms the "emissions gap"—the difference between where we're heading and where we'd need to be to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It makes for some pretty grim reading. Given last year's greenhouse gas emissions, we can afford fewer than four similar years before we would exceed the tota

Bird flu hit a dead end in Missouri, but it’s running rampant in California

Bird flu cases rise to 31

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Ars Technica - All content / 1d

As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread wildly among California dairy herds and farmworkers, federal health officials on Thursday offered some relatively good news about Missouri: The wily avian influenza virus does not appear to have spread from the state's sole human case, which otherwise remains a mystery. On September 6, the Missouri Health department announced that a person with underlying heal

Apple teases “week of announcements” about the Mac starting on Monday

Apple to unveil new Macs

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Apple has released new iPhones, new Apple Watches, a new iPad mini, and a flotilla of software updates this fall, but Mac hardware has gone unmentioned so far. That's set to change next week, according to an uncharacteristically un-cryptic post from Apple Worldwide Marketing SVP Greg Joswiak earlier today. Imploring readers to "Mac [sic] their calendars," Joswiak's post teases "an exciting week o

Removal of Russian coders spurs debate about Linux kernel’s politics

Russian maintainers removed from Linux

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"Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided." That two-line comment , submitted by major Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, accompanied a patch that removed about a dozen names from the kernle's MAINTAINERS file. "Some entries" notably had either Russian names or .ru email addresses. "Various compli

Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC’s click-to-cancel rule

Trade groups sue FTC over rule

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Cable companies, advertising firms, and newspapers are asking courts to block a federal "click-to-cancel" rule that would force businesses to make it easier for consumers to cancel services. Lawsuits were filed yesterday, about a week after the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that " requires sellers to provide consumers with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurrin

Google offers its AI watermarking tech as free open source toolkit

Google open-sources AI watermarking tool

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Back in May, Google augmented its Gemini AI model with SynthID , a toolkit that embeds AI-generated content with watermarks it says are "imperceptible to humans" but can be easily and reliably detected via an algorithm. Today, Google took that SynthID system open source , offering the same basic watermarking toolkit for free to developers and businesses . The move gives the entire AI industry an

When ribosomes go rogue

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In the 1940s, scientists at the recently established National Cancer Institute were trying to breed mice that could inform our understanding of cancer, either because they predictably developed certain cancers or were surprisingly resistant. The team spotted a peculiar litter in which some baby mice had short, kinked tails and misplaced ribs growing out of their neck bones. The strain of mice, ni

Oct 23, 2024

Location tracking of phones is out of control. Here’s how to fight back.

LocateX enables unlawful citizen tracking

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You likely have never heard of Babel Street or Location X, but chances are good that they know a lot about you and anyone else you know who keeps a phone nearby around the clock. Reston, Virginia-located Babel Street is the little-known firm behind Location X, a service with the capability to track the locations of hundreds of millions of phone users over sustained periods of time. Ostensibly, Ba

At TED AI 2024, experts grapple with AI’s growing pains

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SAN FRANCISCO—On Tuesday, TED AI 2024 kicked off its first day at San Francisco's Herbst Theater with a lineup of speakers that tackled AI's impact on science, art, and society. The two-day event brought a mix of researchers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and other experts who painted a complex picture of AI with fairly minimal hype. The second annual conference, organized by Walter and Sam De Brouwer,

Tesla makes $2.2 billion in profit during Q3 2024

Tesla Q3 2024 profits strong

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After a rocky first half of the year, Tesla enjoyed a much healthier third quarter in 2024. As we learned earlier this month , it arrested a slide in sales, delivering 6 percent more electric vehicles year over year. But the automotive side of the business was essentially flat— Tesla attributes its success to its second-best quarter ever for regulatory credits, as well as making it cheaper to bui

Lawsuit: Chatbot that allegedly caused teen’s suicide is now more dangerous for kids

Mother sues Character.AI over son's suicide

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Fourteen-year-old Sewell Setzer III loved interacting with Character.AI's hyper-realistic chatbots—with a limited version available for free or a "supercharged" version for a $9.99 monthly fee—most frequently chatting with bots named after his favorite Game of Thrones characters. Within a month—his mother, Megan Garcia, later realized—these chat sessions had turned dark, with chatbots insisting t

For the strongest disc golf throws, it’s all in the thumbs

Optimal thumb position enhances disc golf

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When Zachary Lindsey, a physicist at Berry College in Georgia, decided to run an experiment on how to get the best speed and torque while playing disc golf (aka Frisbee golf), he had no trouble recruiting 24 eager participants keen on finding science-based tips on how to improve their game. Lindsey and his team determined the optimal thumb distance from the center of the disc to increase launch s

Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC

FCC investigates telecom data caps

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It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers. Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated wit

iOS 18.2 developer beta adds ChatGPT and image-generation features

iOS 18.2 beta released for AI iPhones

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Today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.2 for supported devices. This beta release marks the first time several key AI features that Apple teased at its developer conference this June are available. Apple is marketing a wide range of generative AI features under the banner "Apple Intelligence." Initially, Apple Intelligence was planned to release as part of iOS 18, but some featu

Few truly shocked that NFL player used illegal stream to watch his own team

Ars Technica - All content / 2d

Trying to watch your favorite NFL team's games throughout a season is a fiendish logistics puzzle, one that doesn't even have a "just pay for it" shortcut. You can buy a Sunday Ticket package from YouTube , but that only covers games on Sunday and only those not shown in your local TV market. You can pay for cable or set up an HDTV antenna, but you have to hope it catches NBC, CBS, and Fox for Su

Report: Arm cancels Qualcomm’s architecture license, endangering its chip business

Arm cancels Qualcomm chip license

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Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm's ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips. Bloomberg reports that Arm is canceling Qualcomm's license, an escalation of a fight that beg

San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks

S.F. Muni upgrades from floppy disks

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks. The Muni Metro’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-